


Stitching

by Lise



Series: Tapestries [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Dysfunctional Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Loki (Marvel) Has Issues, Mental Health Issues, Odin (Marvel)'s Parenting, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Thoughts, Thor (Marvel) is a Good Bro, everything's not good but things are maybe getting better, lots of feelings in this here fic, slow healing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-01
Updated: 2018-09-01
Packaged: 2019-07-05 11:41:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15862905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lise/pseuds/Lise
Summary: Know your place, brother.Hisplace. What was it now?Follows directly fromReweaving.





	Stitching

**Author's Note:**

> I took far longer to write this fic than I really should have, but here it is at last, because I am still deeply attached to this series (though I don't know that I'm going to keep going with it - but I don't know that I won't, either). Basically all I want is "wrestling with family issues and feelings and trying to figure out how to live" as a trope, and that's...essentially what this series is about. And what this fic is about. 
> 
> Don't actually have a lot of notes here, except a general thank you to everyone who encourages me and indulges me, and a specific thank you to my [beta](http://ameliarating.tumblr.com), who does not wear a cape but is, indeed, a hero.

Asgard’s waters were cold, and clear, and quiet. Or at least quiet here, where they’d eddied into a small bay. 

Loki stayed in the water until his fingers started to wrinkle, staring upwards and watching the stars make their slow, crawling way across the sky. He thought he might have stayed there forever, were it not for Thor calling his name. 

“Loki!” He said, voice breaking into the relative quiet of his thoughts. “We should go back.” 

Loki closed his eyes and sighed. He dove down, swimming back toward shore until he could stay underwater no longer, forced to stand. Thor had waded back to shore and was sitting next to Loki’s abandoned clothes. He smiled when Loki looked at him, though it looked uncertain. Loki did not try to smile back: he thought it would probably look grotesque.

He reached for his magic without thinking to dry himself, and met that wall again, holding him back from one of the few things that had always been his. The wave of resentment caught him by surprise, though it passed quickly. 

“I don’t suppose you brought a towel, did you?” He asked, keeping his voice dry. 

“I...did not,” Thor said, sounding faintly sheepish. Loki walked out of the water and began wringing water out of his hair. 

“This is going to be an uncomfortable walk back to my cell, then,” he said. Thor twitched. 

“It isn’t a cell,” he objected. Loki paused and looked at him.

“Isn’t it? I cannot go out without permission. The windows are barred. My magic is kept from me. It is a kind prison, but it is still a prison.” He was surprised by how little rancor there was in the words. Thor still looked unhappy to hear them, glancing away. Loki waited to see what he would say. 

“What would you do, if you could move about as you wished?” Thor asked slowly. Loki opened his mouth and then closed it. 

The truth was that he didn’t know. The truth was that he had no idea what he wanted to do now. He wasn’t going to walk away, that much was true. Even if there was nothing for him in Asgard, there was nothing for him away from Asgard, either. 

“I wouldn’t attempt to overthrow the All-Father, if that’s the concern,” Loki said finally. Thor shook his head. 

“I don’t think that is the concern,” Thor said quietly. Loki glanced at him, and then looked away. 

“I am not going to try to die,” he said, and was vaguely surprised to find that he meant it. It wasn’t so much that the desire wasn’t there, or the thought, as that...he actually wasn’t certain what was holding him back. Maybe he was just a coward. 

Afraid that death would look like the Void. Or wouldn’t take him at all. _You beg to die, frostling? No. That gift is not for you._

Thor’s face did something strange. It scrunched up, his eyebrows furrowing. For a moment Loki thought he wanted to weep; the next that he wanted to shout. He lurched toward Loki instead, and then stopped himself. “You won’t?” Thor said, his voice trembling slightly. “Will you swear it?” 

_Did you mourn?_ Loki had asked, on Midgard, and Thor’s response had struck him as hollow. He closed his eyes and looked away. “I do not know that I can swear to anything.” 

Thor looked away like that hurt him. “Not even to that?” He asked, almost a whisper. Loki said nothing, and Thor rubbed his eyes. “I don’t understand it, Loki. How you could...why you would…” 

“Seek death?” Loki said, because Thor did not seem able to shape the words, and they came easily to him. “If you’ve never felt that desire, I don’t know how to explain it to you.” 

Thor’s eyes widened. “You make it sound as though you have before.” 

_Of course I have before,_ Loki thought, _what did you think that was on the Bifrost,_ but he knew that wasn’t what Thor meant. “Does it matter?” 

Thor’s expression went stubborn. “Of course it matters.” 

“Only so you can flagellate yourself with it.” Loki shook his head. “My mind is a broken thing, Thor. You cannot take responsibility for all of it.” 

“But for some of it,” Thor said unhappily. Loki glanced at him. 

“For some of it,” he agreed, at length. He started putting his clothes back on, though slowly. He didn’t want to go back inside. He wanted to stay here, listening to the lapping of the water.

Of course he could not, though. Peace could never last for long. Certainly not his. 

They walked back slowly, in silence. Thor’s head was lowered, a frown fixed on his face; a part of Loki was tempted to ask what troubled him, but he refrained. He could feel his own dark thoughts creeping back in from where they’d gone a little away, and wanted to sigh. 

Approaching the room where he was being kept, he heard the sound of voices in lowered, furious whispers, and almost stopped dead in his tracks. 

“--shouldn’t have been able to get out,” Odin was saying.

“He’s stronger now than he was,” Frigga said. “He could be anywhere now, he might have-”

Thor cast him a guilty look, but Loki was already moving, opening his stride and turning the corner. “Might have what,” he said, surprised by the casual tone of his own voice. “What might I have done?” 

Frigga’s face transformed from tight anger to profound relief. “Loki,” she said. Odin, Loki noticed, nearly slumped. 

“It’s my fault,” Thor said firmly, coming up next to him. “I took Loki out to go swimming.” Odin’s glance in Thor’s direction was sharp, turning quickly angry. Thor straightened. “You know he hates this,” he said defensively. “Being locked away in a cage-”

“For his own good,” Odin shot back. 

“You are doing it again,” Loki said, his voice hard. “Talking as though I am not here, and cannot speak for myself. I might be mad, but I still have the ability to understand and answer.” 

All of them fell silent and stared at him, and Loki only just resisted the urge to quail. He held his back straight and stared at them with defiance. Finally, Odin cleared his throat. 

“What is it you would say, Loki?” He asked, and there was a brief flash of searing hot anger for the way he said it. 

“You say that you wish for me to have a place here,” he said, “and in the same breath you lock me away, something of a child, or a prisoner, or a madman, or perhaps all three in one. What am I to believe? Your words, or your deeds? I more than any know how easy a lie is to speak.

“Perhaps I am a madman, and a prisoner. But I am not a child, and if I am both, or either, I would have you tell me as much.”

Loki fell silent, and realized that he was panting, his breath short. His pulse was pounding in his head, and there was something wild and dangerous seething in his chest, trying to crawl up his throat and out through his mouth. He took a stumbling step back, and almost turned to run. 

Thor took a step toward him like he could sense the urge. “No one here is saying that,” he said, his eyes wide like he even believed it. Loki scoffed. Frigga looked wounded, and his heart twisted but he pushed it aside. She might be kinder, but she, too, treated him gingerly, like he would break if touched.

_(Wouldn’t you?)_

“Loki,” she said soothingly. “We were only worried. That is all. Worried _for_ you.”

“You do not trust me,” Loki said. He could see her fighting with that, trying to decide between a kind lie and a truth she didn’t want to speak. His shoulders fell. “I suppose that’s fair,” he said after a moment. “I’ve given you few reasons to.” 

Thor stepped closer to him, reaching out, and Loki moved away. He caught the look of hurt on Thor’s face out of the corner of his eye, and thought he should feel guilty for putting it there. Or else feel satisfaction. Neither came. 

He missed the peace of the water. 

“I would like to be alone,” he said, “if that is permissible.” 

Odin and Frigga glanced at each other. Thor was staring at him with concern that itched at him, but he kept his eyes on his parents, or those who had called themselves such. It was hard to keep straight which it was supposed to be. 

“Of course,” Odin said, after too long a pause. “We do not mean for you to feel like a prisoner, Loki.”

“Then let me open the windows,” he said. It was almost, but not quite, a challenge. 

“I will lift the enchantment keeping them closed,” Odin said. Frigga gave him a sharp look that he did not acknowledge. “Rest well, Loki. We will leave you to your peace.” 

He retreated into his room and rested his head against the closed door. He could hear them still speaking, though only enough to make out a few words here and there: _not well, the risk, hurt himself._

For a vicious moment Loki imagined doing it. Making a noose of his sheets, or leaping from the window, or tearing open his own wrists with his teeth, to prove that he could, that all their attempts to _protect_ him were meaningless. 

A moment later he felt sick at his own train of thought. Loki supposed that was perhaps a good thing: a sign of some semblance of sanity, that he could at least recognize his own madness. On the other hand, it might be merciful if he could not. 

As it was, even with the windows open he was still trapped within the confines of his skull - a far deadlier snare than even the cruelest jailor could devise. 

* * *

His family obeyed his request to be left alone. Loki passed the time trying to untangle the snarls of his own thoughts. Odin’s question dogged him: _what do you want?_

There was no such thing as a free choice. The Norns bent all things to their will, and what they could not bend, they broke. Every decision had a price. Every step taken led inexorably down a road from which there was no turning back. 

He’d walked his this far, thinking he knew where it would lead, and instead he had found himself here. 

Loki tried to sleep, but his dreams were all ugly, painful, things. He was bleeding out on the floor of Stark’s tower, and kept trying to cry out but no one was coming, no one heard, and he was sliding into the darkness from which there was no coming back. 

He woke up sharply and called a servant to ask to speak with Odin. 

The Allfather came to him swiftly, but Loki did not turn to look at him, instead leaning on the windowsill with his face to the breeze. 

“Loki?” Odin said. The worry in his voice clawed at Loki’s throat. “You asked for me?”

“Ask me about Thanos,” he said. 

Odin did not speak immediately. Loki did not turn to see what look was on his face. “Why?” 

“You want to know, do you not?” Loki asked. “What I know. What he does. What his intentions are. How much danger we are in.”

“There are reasons I have not asked these questions,” Odin said. 

“I won’t break,” Loki said. “If that is what you fear.” A harsh sound, a mockery of a laugh, crawled out of his throat. “Or - or else I already have, so it makes no difference.” 

“Will you look at me?” Odin asked. Loki dug his fingers harder into the sill, closing his eyes before opening them and turning to face his father. To meet his worried eye and not crumple. Odin’s expression did not clear; if anything, it clouded further. 

“Do you want to speak?” He asked, finally. Loki twitched. 

“No,” he said. “But I never will.”

Odin walked slowly to the chair in the room and sat down. “Very well, then,” he said. “What do you want to tell me?” 

“No,” Loki said harshly. “Not like that. _Specifics._ ” 

Odin’s eyebrows furrowed. He looked, Loki thought, like a man fumbling in the dark. _What are_ you _afraid of, old man,_ Loki thought viciously. Fear made him nauseated, but he would not back down now. “Tell me what happened after you let go,” Odin said finally.

“I fell,” Loki said, almost relieved. “For a long time, that was all. I thought I would die. I didn’t.” A laugh bubbled up, more than faintly hysterical. “That fall, I think, tore asunder the little that still held me together. Had I fallen much longer I do not think there would have been enough for him - for _Thanos -_ to use.” He shrugged. “Perhaps that would have been better.” 

“No,” Odin said firmly. “It would not. Do not say such things.” 

“Will you forbid me to think them as well, or is that permitted?” Loki asked. It should have been sharp, biting, but even to Loki’s ears it just sounded tired. “It doesn’t matter. Thanos did find me, or his Chitauri did. He knew what I was, and saw some possible use for me.” 

“So he already knew that the Tesseract was on Earth,” Odin said. 

“It would seem so.” 

“Why send you to retrieve it? Why not simply go himself?” 

Loki shrugged again. “I am not entirely certain. I suspect he needed my magic to open the doorway. As for why he didn’t move on his own...at that point I suspect he didn’t wish to draw too much attention to himself or his actions and thus invite an attack before he was ready. But this is speculation. I am not-” Loki made a noise in the back of his throat. “I was not privy to his councils.”

_Know your place, false Asgardian. You are a servant, not an equal._

_Know your place, brother._

His _place._ What was it now?

“So he commanded you to go to Midgard and retrieve the Tesseract for him,” Odin said. 

“In exchange for Midgard itself to rule, yes.” How stupid he’d been, to ever think he had a chance. There never really had been. All he could ever have done was chosen how to lose. And yet he’d still tried to walk that narrow line between Thanos and the Midgardians where maybe, _maybe_ he could claim something for his own. 

Yes. How _very_ stupid. 

“Was this bargain made before or after he tortured you?”

Something in Loki wobbled precariously. _He didn’t,_ a wild part of him thought. _it wasn’t, it was necessary, I chose._ He swallowed hard. “After,” he said, and his voice sounded strangely, barely like his own. “And before. I needed to be...tempered.” 

“Molded,” Odin corrected darkly. “Bent to his will.” 

Loki’s stomach rolled. “He made me stronger. More able to - endure.”

“More afraid of him, and what he might do if you rebelled.” 

Loki tried not to hunch his shoulders. “Do not put words in my mouth, Allfather.” 

Odin sighed. “It is not your words I hear to begin with, but his.”

Loki realized that his breathing had gone shallow and tried to deepen it. “I do not claim that he was benevolent, or that he was not using me.”

“So why do you cling to this story you have told yourself about what he did to you?” 

_Why? Because I do not want to be what I was, Allfather, because when he found me I was a broken shadow and when I left I was a weapon. Half-mad at best, brittle, but I was not the pathetic creature I was when I fell, and it was better, it was better to have that rage burning because it was the only thing that held off despair._

_The despair I am feeling now._

He shook his head. “This isn’t about me. I called you here to talk about Thanos.” 

“I am more interested in you.” 

Loki barked a laugh. “A new state of affairs, isn’t it?” he said, baring his teeth in a too-sharp grin that didn’t feel like his own. “You never were before.” Odin’s expression spasmed. 

“If I have made you feel as though I do not care,” he began. 

“How thoroughly couched in qualifiers that is,” Loki interrupted. “ _If._ You _feel._ At least,” he added viciously, “Thanos was honest in what he thought of me.” Every time he spoke the name it was like a fist in his gut. He said it anyway, because he did not want Odin to notice he was avoiding it. 

Odin took a sharp breath, and for a moment Loki thought he would lash out, anger provoked, but then he exhaled slowly. “This is the second time you have compared me to him,” he said. “Is that truly how you feel?”

“I could say that I traded one domineering tyrant for another,” Loki snapped. Odin’s face remained still. 

“Could say,” he said. “But would you?” 

Loki looked away. In some ways he did feel its truth. Thanos called himself a parent to his children even as he hurt them. He had told Loki that he was valuable, even as he made it clear that he was expendable. There was a line drawn between them in Loki’s thoughts. 

But he had never loved Thanos. 

“I do not know,” he said, finally. His voice sounded rough, and Loki was afraid he was going to start weeping again. He almost wished for the hollowness, the _bled-dry_ feeling that felt like a shield, sometimes. “I think it would be easier if that were a simple question to answer.” 

Odin’s face fell and for a moment he looked - _old._ It passed, but it jarred Loki to see it just the same. “I wish it were,” he said. “Loki...I have never _wanted_ to hurt you.” 

_But you did,_ Loki thought. _You did._ He held that in, as he had for so long, until he’d scarcely been able to consider another option. Odin waited for several moments, and finally sighed. 

“Do you understand why I press you on this? Why I believe it is important that you name what Thanos did for what it was?”

“You seek to absolve me,” Loki said, and he could hear the bitterness in his voice. “To make me - a helpless pawn.”

“No,” Odin said. “Believe me, Loki, I am aware of the gravity of what you have done. But I wish you to see that...you said that there is something rotten in you. I want you to see that it is not - something intrinsic to you. That you were poisoned, as surely as if Thanos pumped venom into your veins.”

Loki closed his eyes. “But some of it _is_ me.”

“Not all.” Odin’s hand was suddenly on his, and Loki jerked, his eyes opening sharply to stare at him. “And even what may be...was not always, and may not always be.”

“You want to believe that,” Loki said numbly. “You, and Thor, and mother. You all want...but that boy that you imagine, that - pathetic, puling, _child -_ he died, Allfather. And there is no resurrecting him.” 

Odin withdrew his hand. “You are cruel in your assessment of yourself.” 

Loki smiled humorlessly. “I know myself better than any other, do I not? I would say I am in a fine position to judge.” 

“Or perhaps you are too close to see clearly,” Odin said. “Or judge too harshly.”

“I doubt it.” Loki exhaled. “This doesn’t matter.”

“I think it matters very much.” Odin paused, looking pensive, and finally said, “when you attacked Midgard...what did you think would happen if you won?” 

“I never would have,” Loki said. “Oh, perhaps I could have purchased a momentary victory. But I would be soon fighting a war on three fronts: against Thanos, against mortal resistance, and against Asgard. I do not imagine I would have lasted more than a fortnight, if the Chitauri even let me live past the moment my usefulness expired.” 

Odin’s brows knitted together. “Did you know this then?” 

“I knew it was a possibility.” He shrugged. “By then I had already lived my own death a hundred times. Simulations. To prepare me. The prospect held little fear. It was nothing I hadn’t done before, after all.” 

The look on Odin’s face was difficult to interpret, though there was something aching in it, like Loki had stabbed him in the gut. It did not look right, there, and Loki was not certain how he felt for being its cause. 

He folded his shaking hands together to try to stop their trembling. 

“Loki,” Odin said at last, soft and pained. 

“Do not pity me,” Loki said. His voice cracked like a whip. “I do not want your pity.”

“Why must it be pity?” Odin asked. “Why not sympathy? Or love?” 

“Isn’t it a bit late for either?” 

“No,” Odin said. “I will not believe that.”

“And yet I struggle to believe anything else.” 

“A struggle can be won.” 

Loki was suddenly, immeasurably, tired. He turned his face away and stared at one of the walls. “I’ve said enough,” he said. He could feel Odin regarding him but did not return it. 

“Your mother and I have spoken,” he said. “We feel...you may move back to your rooms, if you wish.”

Loki’s instinctive first response was to refuse, because such an offer - such _freedom -_ must come with a trap, a catch. His second was to lunge for it because anything was better than this barren cage. His third to imagine how it would feel, standing in a room where the ghost of his old life lingered, haunting him. 

His fourth was to think that would be fitting. 

“Do you not fear letting me out?” Loki asked. “What I might do with my freedom? That I might not take a blade and open my own veins, or drown myself in my bath, or--” 

“Is your life so hateful to you?” Odin interrupted. 

_I don’t know,_ Loki thought. _I don’t know, I don’t know. I am afraid of oblivion, but I do not know how to live like this. I am a monster, and monsters do not survive their defeat. Everything hurts, and I ache, and I do not see an end._ “Sometimes.” 

“Sometimes is not always.” He saw Odin move and flinched away; he stopped. “I do fear it,” the Allfather said at last. “But...this,” he gestured at the room, “is clearly not helping you. So I will try something else - _anything_ else - if it will give you ease.”

Loki’s chest hurt. “You are so solicitous now,” he said, voice hoarse. “All it took was for me to nearly die. Twice.” He let out a faintly hysterical laugh. “Had I known, I might have done it sooner.” 

“Loki,” Odin said again, and he exhaled harshly.

“Leave me,” he said. “I do not want to speak further.”

Odin paused a long moment, and Loki thought he would ignore him, but at last he stood. “Think on the matter of your room,” he said. “It is your choice.” 

Choices. Always _choices._

Odin left, and Loki was alone again. He bent forward and pressed his forehead to his knees, shuddering as he fought back sobs. The shadows in the corners seemed to close in, pressing on his shoulders.

He was so tired. So very, very, tired.

* * *

He slept eventually, though restlessly, waking again and again and starting at imaginary noises. When he did rest for any extended periods, he dreamed of Thanos or his children stalking his steps, the Other saying _there is no Realm where we can’t find you._

Eir came with a servant bearing his morning meal. 

“I don’t want to talk to you,” he said bluntly. “My thoughts are not yours to pry from my mind.” 

“That is not what I am trying to do, Prince Loki,” she said. “I only want to assess your health.” 

“I do not wish to be _assessed._ ” He bared his teeth at her. “If you press me I will throw you out. I am strong enough for that, now.” She frowned, but she left, probably to complain to Frigga or Odin. He picked idly at the food. His appetite still seemed largely absent, but what he forced down seemed to settle his uneasy stomach. 

Loki wondered if he was meant to summon Odin to give his answer, or if he was just to wait until someone came. He laid a bet with himself on who would approach him next: Frigga, he thought, marginally more likely than Thor. She would seek to soothe him. Mollify him. 

The thought sent a stab of resentment through him that caught him by surprise. 

Around midmorning came the knock on his door, and Loki opened it - apparently that much was permitted, if not actual exit. He blinked, and almost slammed it immediately. Volstagg stood hovering in the hallway, glancing furtively over his shoulder, though he turned quickly back toward Loki when the door opened. 

“Prince Loki,” he said, and then startled. Loki looked at him with his face blank, knowing what he would see. Sickly pallor, face thin bordering on gaunt, dark circles around his eyes. 

“You aren’t supposed to be here,” Loki said flatly.

“Well, no, but-” He looked over his shoulder again, clearly uncertain. Loki gripped the edge of the doorframe hard enough to turn his knuckles white. 

“But of course,” he said, “the rules do not apply to you.” He set his jaw. “You are not welcome. Nor are the rest of your companions. There is nothing that I have to say to you.” 

Volstagg looked like he wanted to wince. “Loki - my prince-”

“Do _not,_ ” Loki hissed. “Do not speak as though you have ever had _any_ respect for me.”

“Hilde made a pie,” Volstagg said, sounding almost desperate. “For you. To help you...get well.”

_What do you know,_ Loki wanted to hiss. _What do you know of what happened, of what I am, do you even care? Why would you, when you never have before--_

He swallowed hard. “I do not know what is worse,” he said, his voice hatefully unsteady. “That you turned on me so quickly, or that you seem to think nothing of it.” 

“Loki-” Volstagg stopped again. “I am sorry,” he said. “I thought that - we could _see_ that something was wrong, and I thought perhaps Thor’s return would help.” 

Loki closed his eyes, pressing his lips together. “Of course,” he said, almost a whisper. “Thor would be needed to set all right. I could _never-_ ”

But he couldn’t have, could he? He’d already been half mad, even then. Never fit to sit the throne. He should have pressed Gungnir back into Frigga’s hands and plunged into the abyss then and there. Spared everyone the _difficulty._

Volstagg shifted uneasily. “We should have had your back,” he said. “As you had ours, on our adventures.” 

Loki was caught so off guard by that admission of _fault_ that for a moment he just stared. Something that had been winding tighter and tighter suddenly went slack. 

Volstagg held out a dish in his hands. The pie, Loki supposed. From Volstagg’s wife. For the sick prince. _Sick._ In all senses of the word, Loki thought. 

“Why are you here?” He asked, the words seeming to come from someone else’s mouth. 

“Thor said you were ill,” Volstagg said after a brief hesitation. “I wanted to offer our...my and Hilde’s...well wishes for your swift recovery.” 

“Is that all?” Loki said, still divorced from himself. “You did not seek to peep at Asgard’s mad prince? To see for yourself my pathetic condition?” Volstagg’s eyes widened, and Loki scoffed. “Well, now you have seen. Feel yourself free to bear word to your three compatriots.”

“That is not - that is not it at all,” Volstagg protested. 

“What do you know of the truth?” Loki asked. He felt like a creature possessed, like there was something else in his skin moving him like a puppet. “What do you know of what was _wrong_? Of my _sickness,_ as the Allfather would have it? What do you know-”

“Volstagg?”

Thor’s voice cut through Loki’s, and he took a deep breath, shaking. Volstagg was staring at him with a mixture of horror and worry, and Loki wanted suddenly to strip away his Aesir skin and spread his hands and say _see what I am, do you understand now-_ -

Volstagg turned, transparently guilty. “Thor!” He said. “I was...I thought to visit your brother and bring him one of Hilde’s pies. She claims that they can cure all ills, and I do not disbelieve her.” 

Thor glanced back and forth between them, and whatever was on Loki’s face, Thor’s expression darkened. “I don’t recall Loki saying that he wished for visitors.” 

“Come, Thor,” Loki said, still speaking through someone else’s mouth. “Don’t you think Volstagg and the others deserve to know the truth?” 

Thor took a sharp breath in, and now it was Volstagg looking back and forth between them. “What are you talking about?” He asked.

“Nothing,” Thor said too quickly, and Loki wanted to laugh at the obvious lie. Volstagg’s eyebrows furrowed. “Thank Hilde for the pie,” Thor said before he could speak, taking it out of Volstagg’s hands, and nearly shoved Loki back into the room, closing the door behind him. 

Loki did laugh then. “I thought it would be Frigga,” he said. “But you come slinking back first.” 

Thor’s face reddened. “What were you going to tell him?” He asked. 

“The truth,” Loki said. “Of course. That I am one of the monstrous Frost Giants. That I attempted to destroy Jotunheim, and when that failed, attempted to die, and when _that_ failed, assaulted Midgard. Should he not know? The first especially, if it is no shame-”

“You _know_ why,” Thor interrupted. “It is no shame, but people here may misunderstand.”

“So it is to remain a secret, then?” Loki asked. “Do you imagine you can keep it? Do you imagine I will _allow_ you to? Let them see what I am. Let them look at me in all my _hideous_ glory.”

“No,” Thor said vehemently. “You are - you are _not_ hideous, but you cannot think it is wise-”

“When have I ever been wise?” 

“You used to be!” Thor cried. “You used to be a voice of sense as often as you were the voice getting me into mischief. Sometimes both in the same day. I _know_ you are not - what you would have me believe, even if I do not understand _why_ you want me to believe it in the first place!” 

He fell silent, panting. Loki felt himself snap back to reality. It was a strange sensation, like a heart leaping back into motion. It sank into him what he had almost done and he sank onto the bed, suddenly shaky and nauseated. 

“It would be easier,” he whispered. “It would be simpler.”

Thor set down the pie he was still holding and walked over, hovering a moment before sitting down next to Loki. He left a space between them, and Loki could not decide if he was glad of it or wanted to close it, wanted to lean into Thor and turn his face into his shoulder and take comfort that he no longer seemed able to find. 

“They betrayed me,” he said, looking down at his hands. “Ignored my orders and went to you. And I was not - I was not _surprised_ but I was still disappointed. But it does not matter, does it? Because mine was the greater crime.” 

“Brother,” Thor said, sounding pained. 

“Thank you for taking me to swim,” Loki said, his hands twisting together. “It was...good.”

Thor stared at him, apparently lost. He smiled tentatively, and the expression looked wrong - Thor should not be tentative, should not be uncertain. _You broke him,_ whispered a voice in Loki’s mind, but perhaps that was hubris. “I am glad,” he said. “I wanted...we can go back, if you wish.” He paused. “Do you... _want_ to see them? Volstagg, Sif, the others?”

“I don’t know,” Loki said. “I can’t tell.” Thor’s eyebrows furrowed, and Loki laughed, bitter and humorless. “I don’t know _what_ I want, Thor. Not anymore. That is - part of the problem.” 

Thor studied him. “Maybe I can help you think it through?” He asked. “You used to do that. I would...half the time I wouldn’t even follow what you were saying, you would just talk and suddenly something would come together in your mind.”

Loki remembered that, like a dream. Pacing back and forth as Thor watched him, rambling on about something or other and as he spoke the pieces would fall into place, or sometimes Thor would say a few words that somehow cut directly to the heart of the issue in a way Loki would never have considered. 

Those days were gone. 

“I want to die,” he said. “I am tired of - hurting. Of being - _trapped,_ not just in this room but in my own mind, in my own _madness_ and I cannot see an escape. I will never be free of my own monstrosity. And yet - and yet I am a coward, afraid of oblivion.”

“You are no monster,” Thor said.

“I beg to differ.” He did not look at Thor’s face, not wanting to see his expression. “But I...I do not know how to live as I am. Like this, as though...I no longer have a place. Or the one that I have I do not fit within.”

“You could,” Thor said, sounding almost desperate. 

“I do not want to,” Loki said. “It would require that I shave off - too many parts of myself.” His hands twisted together. “I do not know what I am supposed to do now.”

“Must you - _do_ anything?” Thor asked. “Can you not just...be?” 

“Be what?” Loki asked. “What am I?” 

“You are Loki,” Thor said staunchly. 

“And what does that mean?” Loki asked. “What is that worth?”

Thor frowned again. “What do you mean? It is worth...you are my brother. A son of Odin, a prince of Asgard.” 

“No,” Loki said. “Not _what am I to you, or to Odin._ What am I, in myself? What lies at the core of me? Because I am afraid that I have seen it, and it is the ugliest of broken things.” 

“That isn’t true,” Thor said vehemently. 

“Thor,” Loki said, staring down at his hands, “I tried to kill you. For a few seconds, I _did_ kill you. Do you so quickly forget that? All in the name of my - _imagined slights._ ” 

“I do not-” Thor exhaled, once again visibly calming himself. “I spoke too quickly. And I have not forgotten. But I have forgiven. Did you even mean to...the blow you struck would not have killed me, had I had my strength.” 

“You think I did not mean it?” Loki said, looking up, infusing his voice with caustic mockery. Thor looked at him steadily. 

“Did you?” 

He didn’t know that, either. The moments in which Thor had been dead were like moments between the leap and the fall, when you hung in midair, suspended for a moment between earth and sky, no solid ground under your feet but aware of the impact that waited at the bottom. He pressed his lips together and shook his head. 

“When he was - when the Mad Titan was testing me,” Loki said, the words spilling off his tongue, “to see if I was - fit to lead. Do you know what my weakness was, again and again, the hesitation that saw me punished for my failure?”

Thor had gone pale, but he did not stop Loki, did not tell him to be silent. Just stared at him. 

“You,” Loki said. “Always you.” He closed his eyes. “You can go. Take the pie with you.” 

“You should eat it,” Thor said after a brief silence. “At least a piece. I’ll cut one for you.” 

When Thor unwrapped the pie, it smelled better than Loki expected. He let his eyes remain closed, picturing Thor pulling out his knife and sinking it through the crust into the soft innards. He pictured Thor sinking the blade into him, driving it through Loki’s guts up toward his heart and pulling it out.

_This is what happens to frost giants on Asgard,_ he said.

Loki opened his eyes and Thor was looking at him with that furrowed brow and touch of a frown. “Loki?” He said. “You didn’t answer my question.”

“I was distracted,” Loki said. He stared down at his hands. “What are you going to say to Volstagg?” 

“What did you say to him?” Thor asked after a nervous pause.

“Nothing more, really, than what you heard.” Loki pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. 

“What would you want me to say?” Thor asked. 

“It isn’t up to me, is it?” Loki said wearily, dropping his hands back down. Thor’s expression betrayed brief irritation. 

“I am _asking_ for your input, Loki.” 

_But will you take it? Does it really matter to you, to any of you--_

“Tell him whatever you like,” he said. “However much you think is...safe. I do not know what he knows already.”

Thor shook his head. “Little. That you fell, then, and returned wounded. More of the circumstances than that has not spread beyond our family, Heimdall, and a few healers who have held their tongues.”

More secrecy, Loki thought. More lies. At least he knew he’d come by the habit honestly. “I see.” He shrugged. “Tell him I am mad. Deluded.” A laugh bubbled up in his throat. “Tell him my mind broke under the strain of ruling. They’ll like that.” 

Thor frowned. “I will not slander you-”

“Is it slander?” 

Thor put a slice of the pie on a plate and brought it over, holding it out. “You are not mad, brother,” he said staunchly. “Gravely wounded, but not _mad._ ”

“A wounded mind is madness, Thor,” Loki said. He took the plate, staring down at the slice of pie. It smelled good, more or less. He couldn’t tell if he actually wanted to eat it. “And I have never been entirely sane.”

“You shouldn’t say these things about yourself,” Thor said, distressed. 

“Why?” Loki asked. “Because it makes you uncomfortable?” 

“Because it isn’t _true!_ ” Thor took a step toward him and Loki leaned back; he stopped, but his hands clenched like he wanted to grab hold of Loki and shake him. “I do not understand why you would think about yourself the way you seemingly do.”

Loki hissed out a breath. “Why? What else could I be, Thor? What is it _you_ think that I am? You never said, beyond that one thing: _your brother._ It turns out that is not enough to live on.” 

“I don’t know what you want me to say!” Thor exclaimed, and Loki stared at him and then started to laugh. 

“Neither do I,” he said. “Norns. I don’t know anything, anymore.”

“I am here,” Thor said. “You can know that.” 

“You always have been,” Loki said. “Sometimes that was part of the problem.” 

“Is it part of the problem now?” 

“No,” Loki said finally, with a long exhale. “Not right now.”

He took a small bite of the pie. It was hot enough to burn his tongue, but it warmed him all the way down to his belly. 

* * *

Frigga didn’t come to him; he was summoned to her. She called, and like a good son, he came, tapping at her door.

“Come in,” she said, and he let himself through. She was weaving, and did not stop for his entrance. 

“What tapestry do you make now, All-Mother?” He asked. “Does it tell the story of Thor Odinson’s mighty victory on Midgard?” 

“No,” she said. “It does not. I have no wish to weave scenes of war.” She paused and stood. “I wanted to apologize. In our desire to protect you, we made you feel like a prisoner.”

“I was a prisoner,” Loki said flatly. “Not in name, but in truth.”

“Then I am sorry that we made you a prisoner.”

Loki stared at her for a long moment, then barked a laugh. “You are doing one better than Odin,” he said. Frigga winced.

“Your father is trying,” she said. “You are very hard on him.” 

“ _I_ am hard on _him,_ ” Loki said, his hackles rising. “I would consider it fair turnabout, for how he treated me, nothing ever good enough, everything could always be better _somehow--_ ”

He cut himself off. Frigga was looking at him with something aching in her eyes and suddenly it just made him angry. He held his breath until it passed, or at least faded. She reached out toward him and he shuddered but did not draw back, let her lay her hand gently against his cheek. 

“How long have you been so angry?” she asked. “So unhappy?” 

“Long enough that I struggle to remember when it was otherwise,” Loki said.

“And yet you said nothing,” she said. 

“What would you have done?” Loki asked lowly. “You would have smoothed it over. You would have soothed me with kind words, counseled me to patience, told me that I had my own worth. You would have urged me to be content with a role to the side, in the shadows. You would have told me that Odin loved me, Thor loved me, you loved me, as though love makes all things right. And nothing would have changed.” 

He pulled away from her hand and sank down onto her couch. “I hid,” he said, “because I learned there was no use in speaking.” 

He was hurting her. Loki knew he was hurting her, and a part of him wanted to get down on his belly and beg forgiveness for it, but if he started crawling now he would never get up again. 

“Loki,” she said softly. “My child.” 

“I am tired of fighting,” Loki said dully. 

“You don’t have to fight.” 

“I am not certain I know how to stop.” 

“You could accept that we are not your enemies,” Frigga said. “That we want to help you.” 

“How?” Loki asked. “What does that mean?” 

“What do you want it to mean?” 

_I don’t know,_ Loki thought again, almost a scream. _I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know, why do you keep asking me that, why do you keep asking me anything as though I am certain of one single Norns-damned thing._

“Loki?” Frigga said, her eyebrows knitted together. Her face was blurry, and it took Loki a moment to realize that he had started crying. 

_I don’t want to feel like this,_ he thought. _Can’t this just be over?_

“Amma,” he said. “It _hurts._ ”

“Oh, my boy,” she said, and sat down next to him, drawing him into a hug. “My magpie child. I know. I know.”

It felt as though he wept forever. When it was over, he was wrung out, weary, his head resting on Frigga’s lap with her fingers running through his hair. 

“My rooms,” he said quietly. “I think I would like them back. Odin said I might, if I wished.”

“Yes,” Frigga said. “They _are_ yours. Would you wait until tomorrow, that the servants might make things ready?” 

Loki nodded. “I can wait,” he said, and closed his eyes to shut out everything but the smell of Frigga’s dress and her hand on his head. 

* * *

Loki remembered when he’d been given his own suite of rooms. He and Thor had shared one as long as he could remember, but all it had taken was one of Thor’s then-friends saying something snide about _babies-who-can’t-sleep-alone_ for Loki to march straight to Frigga and Odin demanding his own quarters. 

(Thor had punched the idiot in the nose - probably broken it. At the time, Loki had thought it a great show of fraternal loyalty. Now, Loki wondered if he had not felt just as shamed as Loki, but for his own sake.)

The suite of rooms he’d been given as little more than a boy was the same that he had lived in for all the centuries of his life since. Accumulating trinkets and odds and ends, a modest library of his own, the skull of a griffin he’d killed in Alfheim perched on a shelf, a tapestry Frigga had woven hanging above his desk. 

Everything looked just the same, as though he’d stepped out only moments before. He felt the tingle of Frigga’s magic on his skin - preserving, protecting. She’d made this room a shrine to her deceased child. 

He walked over to the desk and picked up the topmost book on a stack that was sitting there. _Jotunheim’s Giants: A Survey,_ it said, and Loki dropped it as though it had burned him. After a moment he swept it and the rest off his desk and to the floor. A piece of parchment that had been pinned underneath fluttered and Loki picked that up next. 

_Thor,_ it said, and nothing further. Loki set it back down and moved away, over to the shelf and its books painstakingly collected from all corners of the Realms, drawn together here, as if by accumulating enough knowledge Loki might make up for everything else he lacked, might fill the hollow in himself. 

The rug was soft under his feet. The bed looked soft as well, the chair in one corner battered but excruciatingly comfortable. He walked over to it and sat down, sinking into it with a sigh. He turned his head slowly from side to side, trying to pin down the uncomfortable, constricted feeling in his chest. 

A year ago and some he had walked out of this room for the last time. 

Loki got up again and walked over to look at a small sculpture sitting on his dresser. It did not look like anything in particular, black and white marbled, smooth to the touch. Loki could not remember where he’d found it. Or why he’d kept it. 

Why _had_ he kept it? 

Why had any of this been left? Why all these _worthless_ trinkets spared as though they were treasures, when they were anything but? Just because they had belonged to a child - no, not a child, a monster, a _traitor,_ a man who _killed himself_ rather than face his failure--

The sculpture smashed against the wall, shards falling to the floor. Loki stared at it, breathing hard, and then reached for the nearest thing to hand - a wooden box full of vials of things, he scarcely remembered what. He tore the box open and smashed the vials under his heel, ripped the box apart at the hinge and threw it down. 

_Keep going,_ murmured the seething force trapped in his ribcage. _Destroy all of it. Everything here, none of it is worth saving._

_Yes,_ Loki thought wildly. _You’re right. Nothing here is worth saving._

He tore books off the shelves and ripped the pages out, burning them to ash before they hit the ground. He broke glass in his hands or under his feet, ripped up every paper in his desk and then the desk itself, the more he destroyed the more he _wanted_ to destroy. He broke the mirror in the bathroom and left his knuckles stinging; he summoned a knife and shredded the luxurious comforter on the bed with it--

And froze, staring at the knife in his hand. 

It was the first time he had tried to work any magic, much less summon any _weaponry,_ in a long while. And now there was a knife in his hand, and he was standing in his own room. 

He remembered moments, when he’d been struggling to think what he should do, after Odin had fallen but before he’d taken up Gungnir. When the thought had crossed his mind: _I could end all of this. I can make all of this stop._

Only he’d chosen to try to prove himself instead and - witness what had happened _then._ But now - it was almost like he could go back, now, and set that misstep right. 

He kept his blades sharp. It probably wouldn’t hurt that much, or for that long. If he could manage to sever arteries in both thigh and throat even Eir’s intervention wouldn’t be able to save him, no matter how swiftly aid arrived. He could do it. 

_It hurts._

Loki looked around at the room in which he was standing. It looked like a storm had blown through. Scarcely anything was untouched. 

He imagined Thor, opening the door and finding Loki bloodless and dead amid this wreckage. He would blame himself, of course; Thor always did, for the things that weren’t his fault, and never, for the things that were. Or maybe it would be Frigga, or Odin, confronted with the gravity of their error - but which error?

Loki lowered the knife and took a deep breath, and then another. Slowly, he set the blade aside.

There was a small bell by the door that could be used to summon a servant. Loki rang it, and waited, and when one came opened the door just a crack so the state of the interior could not be seen. 

“Send me supplies for cleaning,” he said. “For me, not...I intend to do it myself.” 

She gave him an odd look, but bobbed a curtsey and left. Loki closed the door and turned back to face the mess he’d made of his things. He wasn’t going to put it back the way it had been before. And putting this room in order could not fix everything else. 

But at least it was one thing he could do.


End file.
